Matt originally picked out Robin as a good fill for the rhythm spot...that would have worked imo - he could have still done the occasional lead line or something on new songs - but he wasn't really suited for Slash duties.

It would have been interesting to have Robin on rhythm and Bucket on all leads. Although even then - I love and respect bucket's playing but his style and technique again isn't really suited to the old GNR catalogue. He has the chops to play anything but the way he plays is so avant garde that he isn't a logical choice to front a classic rock aerosmith/stones style band like GNR.

I know that's because Axl wanted to change the sound - but then that didn't really happen. Aside from Silkworms, Riad and a few other tracks (which I like) most of the time the band played AFD stuff. If that was going to be the case it would have made more sense to go with a monster classic rock player like Aldrich to try and replicate slash.

Sometimes I think CD would have been interesting as a side project. Imagine the GNR name was owned by the AFD guys. Then in the same way Slash did snakepit cos they couldn't agree, Axl could have run off and made CD as a sideproject - free to do as much synth and non-traditonal gnr sounds as he liked complete with bucket and the whole 2001 circus vibe - toured clubs for a year like snakepit - they they could have regrouped GNR and made some new projects artistically. Different universe I guess.

I actually love CD, but its weird to me that these 15 songs seem to have dominated 30 years of Axl's life or something. it's why i'd like to see them move on and do a new album. It's kinda weird this long after we're still doing remixes and still considering these songs new. It's weird that there's never anything truely new.

That said - the clip of Axl on the TIL remix is insane...makes u wonder what else is in the vault....such amazing rasp...it's killer...better than the released version IMO.